


Run, rabbit, run

by lanyon



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 07:59:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13095816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: Jem Walker is learning to be a person again.





	Run, rabbit, run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shycraft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shycraft/gifts).



Jem sometimes watches Kieren pretend to be a person. He’s good but she’s better. She’s been pretending to be a person since they started curing the Rotters. Maybe even before. Sometimes, Jem can’t remember when she was a person.

Sometimes, Kieren forgets and his shoulders don’t move and Jem tries to hold her breath for as long as Kieren doesn’t breathe, but Kieren never needs to breathe.

Jem takes a deep gasp and Kieren looks over at her, half-smiling. 

“Are you too warm?” he asks, and he’s kind like he hasn’t been dead, or known cruelty.

Her cheeks must be red and she’s still breathing hard and she shakes her head and looks down at the college prospectus in her lap. “No,” she says. “No.”

When she glances up again, Kieren’s shoulders are moving, just a little. She wonders if he counts. _Breathe-Leeds-United-Breathe-Leeds-United-Breeaaathe_.

.

Jem goes to a university open day, in Sheffield. It will be a year before she thinks about applying but her guidance counsellor, her therapist and her mother all think that it will be good for her to think about life outside Roarton, and life beyond Roarton. She’s not sure she believes in it, not really. She’s not sure she deserves it but she knows better than to say that out loud, where anyone can hear her.

Simon offers to drive her but she turns him down.

She thinks she appreciates what he’s trying to be. A normal boy, seeing her brother, another normal boy. It’s hard not to see the pallor and it’s hard not to be drawn in by the flatness of his gaze, somehow even more lifeless than Kieren’s. It’s hard not to think about how many times she has seen that gaze before, and how often she wants to reach for a gun or a knife or even the poker, standing by the fireplace. 

She travels to campus alone and the further she gets from Roarton, the freer she should feel. 

Instead, it feels like she can’t breathe. 

She can’t breathe. She needs to get off the bus. She closes her eyes and rests her head against the bus window and she thinks of Kieren. She thinks of him not needing to breathe and she’s suddenly and bitterly jealous of her brother. 

It’s not the first time she’s been jealous of him, even since he died, and even since he came back.

She thinks of Kieren and takes one breath and holds it, and holds it.

She lets it out. 

She takes a breath and holds it, and holds it. 

Roarton falls behind. 

The bus journey is nearly three hours long and, even though she knows that Sheffield isn’t a big city, in comparison to Roarton, it sprawls, and it’s grey. It’s raining when she gets off the bus and she’s so tempted to ask the driver to take her home. 

She takes a breath.

.

It’s not awful, in the end. 

.

Towards the end of the day, they end up in a pub, near the bus station. Jem, and three other fifth-formers from two other schools in Lancashire, are sitting around a small round table in the corner, while one of the freshers, who was showing them around, is up at the bar, promising the barman that they’re all old enough to drink.

“Honestly, I think I’d like to go to Oxford,” says one of the girls, Lucy, and she sounds right posh. “My projected grade is four A stars and I’ve always wanted to read English there.”

Jem rolls her eyes and catches the eye of one of the guys. He’s got a ridiculous name, like T-bone, or something, and he seems proud of it, flexing it like it’s a muscle. He gets distracted by the arrival of their drinks and Alex leans in close.

“He was big in the HVF, you know,” says Alex. 

“Oh,” says Jem. She’s not sure if she’s supposed to act impressed.

“Ugh,” says Lucy. “Those barbarians.”

“Right,” says Jem. “I’m sure that wouldn’t go down well in Oxford.”

The others laugh, and Lucy does too, like Jem has genuinely said something witty. “No,” says Lucy. “You’re absolutely right.”

Jem’s a little impressed that Lucy’s drinking a pint, even though she sounds like she swallowed a silver spoon. “Don’t get me wrong,” says Lucy, who’s probably never been wrong about anything in her life. “We all make mistakes and we all thought that the Partially Deceased were, well, evil soulless monsters.”

“Right,” says Jem, cautiously, and she reaches for her pint too. “We … I mean. The HVF were just protecting people.”

“Yeah, totally,” says T-bone. He kinds of drawls it. “But it was pretty awesome, you know? Being part of something important.”

Jem is trying to remember how that felt. She doesn’t think she can. Being in the HVF was an act of desperation for her, before it was ever a badge of honour, and now she can only think of Kieren, and even of Simon, and their flat, expressionless eyes and how they pretend to breathe, just to make the living feel comfortable.

(Sometimes, she thinks of Lisa, and how she’ll never have to pretend to breathe and be a person.)

“Yeah,” says Jem. “Except they were wrong, weren’t they?”

“Whatever,” says T-bone. “The guns were wicked.”

We were wrong, she wants to say. We got it so wrong. She doesn’t know why she cares what these strangers think. She’s probably never going to see them again and her bus is in twenty minutes and she can go back to the strangeness of Roarton.

“My brother’s one,” she says, because it doesn’t matter. “And I nearly killed him,” she says. “And assholes like you would have called me a hero because the guns were wicked.” 

She stands up and drains her pint, and she’s shaking a little. 

“Excuse me. I’ve got to go home.” She picks up her bag and Lucy applauds her and it doesn’t sound like she’s taking the piss. 

“Well bloody said,” she says and she smiles at Jem. “Best of luck with university. Maybe I’ll see you again?”

“In Oxford?” asks Jem, and she laughs. “Not bloody likely.” She grins at Lucy though, and ignores T-bone and Alex, and she walks outside.

She steps onto the pavement and takes a deep breath.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this, Shycraft. Have a wonderful Yuletide!  
> Title from Pink Floyd's _Breathe_.  
>  (And thanks, L and M, for the midnight cheerleading!)


End file.
